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Edgar delivers his infomercial, selling himself for a second term By CHARLES N. WHEELER III Late night channel surfers who stumbled across replays of Gov. Jim Edgar's State of the State message last month should have had no trouble recognizing the speech for what it was: a 45-minute infomercial plugging his bid for a second term. Like those cable television shows pitching home gym equipment or get-rich-quick real estate deals, Edgar's address touted the virtues of the product — his administration — while playing to the concerns of the viewers — Illinois voters. His three-year tenure has seen "dramatic changes" that have set Illinois on "a new direction," Edgar claimed. Moreover, he said, the gains were made without violating his no-new-taxes pledge of Campaign '90, even in the face of tremendous fiscal pressure. "We have held the line on taxes despite an unprecedented budget crisis ... [and] increasing demands placed on the state and its taxpayers by monumental and catastrophic changes in our society, including the breakdown of the family structure," Edgar said, stressing his major campaign theme. At the same time, the governor proposed a number of initiatives hitting hot-button issues like crime, education, welfare and jobs. All shared one feature in common — relatively modest price tags. For example, Edgar's top-billed anti-crime measure, a ban on assault weapons, should entail little or no cost to the state. In like manner, his call for 12 charter schools across Illinois could be achieved without any additional expense. Indeed, the most costly item may be the plan to require teenage welfare mothers to earn their high school diplomas, which Edgar said could cost $10 million for supportive services like child care and transportation. The governor's bargain-basement agenda reinforces the campaign image of a frugal manager he'd like to project, of course. But it also reflects an ongoing budget squeeze that effectively precludes any thought of grandiose programs like former Gov. James R. Thompson's Build Illinois. In fact, the fiscal crunch no doubt helps explain why Edgar glossed over a major campaign issue — school finance. While averring that education funding is crucial, the governor made no mention of the vast disparity between rich and poor districts, a gulf which finds three-quarters of the state's public school youngsters in districts with per pupil spending below the level a legislative task force deemed necessary to provide an adequate education. Nor did he address the plight of more than 100 school districts on a state watch list because they're skating on thin financial ice. Instead, Edgar stressed the need to make sure schools spend their dollars wisely and effectively. And he noted that some school districts produce higher test scores than counterparts that spend more per pupil, which he said "suggests there is more to educational excellence than money" and a need "to look to reforms that will produce educational equity as well as financial equity." Such comments foreshadow a fiscal 1995 budget that will fall far short of meeting the needs of the state's schools, for the state can't boost education spending significantly without a tax increase, and that will not occur during an election year. Moreover, even current school funding levels are jeopardized by runaway Medicaid costs that are likely to exceed budget allocations by some $1 billion this year, as Edgar warned in his address. For every late night infomercial there's a competing spot promoting a rival exercise program or money-making scheme, and the State of the State was no exception. But the criticisms leveled by the main Democratic challengers were neither incisive nor consistent. Instead, they echoed the standard party line that Edgar is a caretaker who lacks vision. Perhaps the most on point was state Comptroller Dawn dark Netsch, who rightly noted Edgar's failure to address the school funding issue and disputed the governor's claim to have put the state's fiscal house in order. Those two goals are mutually exclusive under the no-new-tax 6/February 1994/Illinois Issues parameters set by the governor, a point Netsch tacitly concedes in endorsing higher income tax rates to shift more of the school finance burden to the state from local property taxes. Yet when Edgar proposed cutting hospital and nursing home rates to rein in Medicaid spending — which for years has soaked up dollars that otherwise could have gone to the schools — Netsch was among the first to object. The two other major Democratic hopefuls, state Atty. Gen. Roland W. Bums and Cook County Board President Richard Phelan, were less on target. Both chided Edgar as a latecomer to the crime issue, when in fact each clambered aboard the bandwagon by unveiling his own crime package just three days earlier. In a breathtaking bit of rhetorical gymnastics, Phelan first criticized Edgar for not dealing with prison crowding, then scored him for not endorsing a "truth in sentencing" plan that would require some offenders to spend more time behind bars. Burris also lambasted Edgar's crime record, contending the governor was nowhere to be found while the attorney general was laboring to make Illinois streets safer. Pressed for specifics, however, Burns could fault only Edgar's amendatory veto of a measure cracking down on sweepstake scams — hardly the sort of criminal activity that strikes fear in the hearts of the electorate. As for his own accomplishments, the attorney general cited a law authorizing statewide grand juries to probe drug-related activities and a Crime Victim's Rights Amendment which wrote into the Constitution certain guarantees for crime victims. Edgar, though, was the governor who signed into law the statewide grand jury legislation which attorneys general had sought for decades. And the victim's rights Burris championed already were spelled out in the statutes. The real test of any infomercial is whether the viewer buys the product. While that result won't be known for another nine months — and then will be shaped by a myriad of other factors — Edgar outpointed his chief rivals in this first head-to-head showing. Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at Sangamon State University in Springfield and a former correspondent in the Springfield Bureau of the Chicago Sun-Times.

February 1994/Illinois Issues/7